


Cost

by Camorra



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Hell Girl AU, M/M, Making Questionable Choices for Other People, Questionable Choices in General, Shiki Appreciation Month, Shiki is a Monster Fucker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-02
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-14 14:07:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16494050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Camorra/pseuds/Camorra
Summary: For the price of your soul, the person of your choice will be dragged to hell, no matter how petty or small the reason.Izaya loves his job.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> completely unbeta'd, so typos probably abound despite my best efforts.   
> i think varrix might have done a hell boy izaya 382831432098 yrs ago, i'd go check it out.

Every night, at midnight, those that have vicious, poisonous hatred in their hearts can access his hell site.

Now, it’s even on your mobile phone.

Convient, ne?

Between his fingers, he holds a red string. When he twists it, the doll at the bottom circles in lazy loops, over and over and over.

There’s a client in front of him, shivering despite the eternally warm air of his realm. He thinks him name is Jihiro, but he’s not sure and it really doesn’t matter.

He’ll give the doll the Jihiro with the string _on_ and Jihiro will inevitably rip the string _off_.

And that. That’s when the real fun begins.

But first.

“Hello,” he greets his customer, tongue caressing each syllable. “You called for me.”

“I didn’t,” the client swears. “I _didn’t.”_

He wishes he could skip this part, get down to business. Every time he says: “You did. You contacted my website. You want me to take revenge for you, drag someone off to hell on your behalf.”

He waits for the dullness of comprehension to overtake the shine of confusion and fear. It comes quickly. “It was a joke,” his client says. “A joke. Not real, haha.”

“Your hatred was real enough. _Is_ real enough.”

Jihiro’s voice wobbles, “and. And if it was? If I pulled the string, what would happen?”

Izaya smiles. “Your grievance shall be avenged, of course. And your soul becomes mine.”

 

Half his job is _watching._

It’s fine, he likes that part of his job. He likes all parts of his job, really, but this is one of his favorites.

Jihiro is spineless, a grunt. A man with aspirations and no backbone to get him there.

Petty. Mean.

_Desperate._

“You know what happens to those that can’t pay, don’t you?” Jihiro says, all borrowed swagger and brazen confidence stemming from knowing you have the sheer force of numbers on your side. “Should we tell him what happens to those that don’t pay, huh?”

“I can’t pay,” the restaurant owner says, anger and fear swirling into one dangerous mixture, “cause business is so bad because _scum_ like you scare everyone _away!”_

It’s five against one, the restaurant owner never stood a chance, though he puts up a valiant effort, punching and kicking until he simply can’t.

Ah, the simple tenacity of desperation. The simple violence of brute force to feel strong.

Humans are simple creatures, really. It’s when they push past their limits that they become extraordiary.

Jihiro is not extraordinary.

Jihiro folds before his boss, kneeling on the floor, head practically on the floor.

“How many times have I told you,” the man in the white suit says, voice colder than ice, “that you _cannot_ use violence on civilians?”

“He wasn’t paying, what was I—” a fist in Jihiro’s hair, and his head meets the floor, loud and cracking.

“You were supposed,” his boss says, voice low and calm and frozen, “to _think._ To be a silent, unwelcome presence. To blast a radio, to _irritate._ ”

“Shiki, I—”

“Mr. Takeshi ended up in the hospital, something I’m _sure_ you’re not aware of. He’s alive, lucky for you, or your punishment would be more severe.”

Jihiro freezes, going stock still. “Shiki, I—”

The click of the knife being set before him seems to answer any questions. Jihiro is pale, almost as pale as Shiki’s suit. His hand shakes as he holds the knife, as he places it on his knuckle.

Shiki’s face is impassive, almost _bored_ as he watches Jihiro shake and tremble and sob as the resonant clacks of the knife hitting bone then floor echo through the room.

Jihiro doesn’t get ten steps outside of the office before he yanks the string, Izaya’s doll tumbling to the filthy pavement of Tokyo.

 

Shiki Haruya lives alone.

So it should startle him more when he sees someone else in his mirror when he’s brushing his teeth, late at night.

But it doesn’t.

He simply spits and asks, “what do you want?”

And Izaya was going to have the next thing out of his mouth be a scorpion or a snake, maybe. Have the taps bleed the blood Shiki has spilled. Have the fingers he’s detached tickle his spine, his hair.

But he doesn’t want to anymore.

“I’m here on behalf of a client,” Izaya says instead. “He wants you dragged down to hell.”

Shiki doesn’t look terribly surprised. “Odd, you don’t look like a hitman.”

“Oh? Have a lot of experience, do you? What do they look like?”

“Well, they don’t wear kimono, for one,” Shiki says, voice dry. “They have weapons, for another.”

“Like what?”

“Like this.”

The gun is black and matte and entirely useless.

“Ooh,” Izaya says, approving, “clever. Where did you have that? I didn’t even see you get it. Seems a useful yakuza skill though, ne?

Shiki answers by pulling the trigger.

Izaya responds by sending the bullet back to crack Shiki’s mirror, send it tumbling into his reflection. Seems cruel to have poor Shiki miss entirely, ne?

He leaves Shiki alone with his gun and his shattered mirror. And if all it reflects are severed body parts, well. There’s no rule saying he’s not allowed to have fun.

 

There’s no rule says that he has to exact vengeance _immediately,_ either.

Besides, it’s much better if you can tailor the experience to the person, have their own personal living hell on earth. Push then to the very edge of what they can handle before all choice is forever taken from them

The problem is, Shiki doesn’t flinch.

No amount of maggots in his coffee, of blood dripping down the walls seems to shake him.

So Izaya tries the subtle.

He moves things from where they should be, warps time in ways it shouldn’t, figures in shadows, and odd things that shouldn’t be.

Still, Shiki’s mask doesn’t crack.

On the seventh day, Haruya Shiki is alone sitting at his breakfast table when he says casually to nothing and no one: “Are you satisfied yet?”

“Satisfied with what, hmm?” Izaya says, propping a chin in his hand, “what do you think I have to be unsatisfied with?”

Shiki is clearly unsurprised to see him. “May I make you a cup of something? I’m afraid I don’t have much, but I do have tea.”

On the seventh day, Izaya drags Jihiro down to hell at the behest of a restaurant owner that will never walk again.

 

The world is full of hate and pettiness and violence. There’s always another request coming through, another soul that wants revenge, or solace, or peace but cannot grasp it themselves.

There’s a girl in her school uniform, willing to do _anything_ to escape, selling her soul to escape her tormenter.

There’s a hateful husband. A wronged woman. An endless parade of misery and salvation and damnation.

And he loves his job, he does! Watching humans, watching the countless ways their lives combine and intermingle, how they react and rationalize when their shadows move and hands reach for them from walls.

But he can’t help but be dissatisfied as his latest contract screams and screams and screams.

“Do you repent?” Izaya asks, already knowing the answer, “do you repent for your sins? For putting children’s lives in danger to feed your savior complex, your _ego_?”

 _“Never,”_ his victim screams, spittle flying, eyes wide. Even as tiny corpses shamble towards him and open him to see his organs pulsating like he did to them in life.

A doctor. Funny how even those high in society can just as easily be the dregs of humanity.

“Then I sentence you to an eternity in hell,” Izaya says, and the words are starting to feel dry and boring, “endless pain and suffering with no hope of reaching Paradise.”

And Izaya grabs the man’s collar and does just that.

 

At midnight, his computer pings.

_Kazamoto Takaaki._

Kazamoto looks like a swamp lizard crawled out of one of the Tokyo sewers, put on a suit, and started calling himself a man. He’s cold-blooded, vicious, ruthless, snake-like in every way.

He’s rooting through trash for receipts, making a prostitute cry in a dimly lit bar. He’s pulling surveillance tapes from places he shouldn’t have access, tracking down those that should have by all accounts been _dead._ All with that dead, slit-eye glare that reminds Izaya of the dead things he’s seen on the other side of his realm.

But more importantly, he’s one of Shiki’s coworkers.

“I found some things on one of the execs you wanted me to,” Kazamoto says, throwing open the door to Shiki’s office. “Interesting things.”

Izaya can’t be seen, he knows this. But Shiki’s eyes flick and linger on him anyway before returning to Kazamoto. “Like what?”

“At least two of them? Pedophiles. There are wire transfers at least once a month to two known suppliers. And they’re not small ones either.”

Shiki just hums. Kazamoto has more, a laundry list of people Izaya hasn’t heard of and doesn’t care about, but obviously mean something to Shiki. Izaya takes the chance to study Shiki’s office. It’s decorated much like the other offices in the building, all black leather and polished wood. Horns, for some reason. Izaya’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s a family thing, not a personal one. In fact, nothing in Shiki’s office seems to be of the personal slant.

It’s so _boring._

One of the most boring offices Izaya has ever had the misfortune to encounter. Even the serial killers usually have a framed photo of… _something_ on their desk. A family. A dog. In one notable case, an apple.

Books on law and commerce live in his bookcase, even the _titles_ are so boring Izaya has a hard time staying awake just _looking_ at them.

But it’s a calculated impersonal, Izaya thinks. Nothing that can be used against him, no personal details that will end up in a lizard monster’s greedy hands to horrify his co-workers with.

As far as Izaya can tell, Kazamoto’s not something actually _evil,_ Izaya’s seen evil. He _works_ for evil.

Kazamoto’s just a creepy human, is all. In fact, Izaya has yet to see him interact with his client, but can’t imagine it being something worse than the third degree Kazamoto put the poor sex worker through _._

He should follow Kazamoto out the door, take his victim’s example and find every little dirty detail about his life to shove in his face, but Izaya lingers instead.

“Change your mind about dragging me to hell?”

Saying something like: ‘ _you can see me?’_ would be trite and stupid because it’s obvious that Shiki _can_ even though he _shouldn’t._

 _“_ Hm, no. You were just lucky, someone wanted my client dead before I had the chance.” Izaya smiles, “but I still can, if you’d like.”

“I’ll pass, thank you.”

“Shame, I think you would do well there.”

“So if you’re not here for me, you’re here for Kazamoto,” Shiki says.

“Ah, perhaps.”

“Suppose that answers whether the hell site rumors are true.”

If Izaya didn’t know better, he’d say that Shiki was his client, ruled only by a curiosity to see if he’s real. He’s had clients like that before, pulling others down to an eternity of damnation to satisfy their own personal curiosity.

He respects that.

“I suppose they are,” Izaya answers, running his fingers over the spine of the dozens of boring books.

“I suppose you’re the hell girl then?”

Izaya _hates_ that name.

It sounds so dull, so tired, so _childish._ He’s not even a girl. But it’s the name his humans gave him and he accepts it and wears it, if not with pride, then something close to it.

“Some call me that,” Izaya tilts his head, looks at Shiki, “others call me Orihara Izaya.”

“Interesting name.”

“It means: ‘to look over the crowd,’” Izaya smiles. “I think it’s rather fitting. I do have to watch, after all. I don’t simply _snatch,_ that lacks grace. It’s…poetic to have lives end as they were lived, it’s a rare thing to happen to humans naturally, ne?”

“There’s an art to everything,” Shiki says magnanimously, as if he didn’t live through a week of horrors to see were the cracks in his surface lay. “I’d like to talk to you, if you have the time. I see you’re busy now, but perhaps later?”

“Oh? And what would I have to talk to you about, hm?”

Shiki spreads his hands. “Anything you might want.”

“Aren’t you presumptuous.”

“I'd say more curious. Shall I see you at my place at, say, ten?”

“ _Very_ presumptuous, ne?” Izaya smiles at him, making sure to show teeth that aren’t quite human-like anymore. “I like it. You’ll see me when I wish.”

 

In the intervening time, Kazamoto’s managed to get himself into a coffeeshop, one of those places that could be anywhere and look unchanged.

He’s shoving bills at the cashier, who takes them as gingerly as she can, trying her very best to not touch any portion of his skin with hers. If Kazamoto notices, he makes no indication of it, just takes his change and his coffee and leaves.

The cashier washes her hands and and shudders and far be it for _Izaya_ to decide the worth of a soul.

He snatches her when she turns from the sink, so that she looks up and she’s his realm of everlasting twilight.

“Huruhi Shizuka,” he says, “I’ve heard your request.”

He holds up his doll, the same one he’s used for years and years because he’s yet to have a single case where they decide to not pull the string.

“If you pull the string,” he reminds her, “your request will be granted, at the cost of your soul. At the end of your life, you will be taken to hell, with no chance of Paradise or redemption.”

The string flutters to the group before Huruhi even finishes drying her hands.

 

Kazamoto is _easy._

His type usually is.

“Can you _hear_ me?” he’s screaming at a hundred faceless people. A hundred people who ignore him, who won’t acknowledge him.

Until they do. A hundred faceless people reeling back in disgust, in fear. _“Did you hear what he did to his classmate?”_ they whisper to each other. _“Did you see the way his mother looked at him?”_

_“Did you hear?”_

_“Did you see?”_

_“Did you know he’s a_ monster?”

Kazamoto goes to hell without a fuss or complaint.

 

Izaya doesn’t show up at ten, he shows up at midnight, when Shiki’s stepping out of the shower.

He’s not replaced the mirror yet, and there’s an empty space where one should be, but the glass is long gone.

“Is there something inherently fascinating about my bathroom?” Shiki asks, looking relatively unbothered to find him there while he’s half-naked and wet and vulnerable.

“It’s where you are, ne? What’s the point of coming to visit if you don’t talk to your host?”

Besides, Shiki’s more interesting when you can see under the white suits he favors, when you can see the colors and designs swirling from his shoulder and down his back and disappearing under the towel.

“That’s true enough,” Shiki says. “Give me a moment to get dressed.”

Izaya ignores him, following him into his bedroom. Shiki scowls at him, but Izaya smiles in return and Shiki doesn’t comment.

“I have been wondering, why invite a servant of hell into your home? Seems rather, hmm, shall we say, _foolish?”_

“Is it?” Shiki says, leaving his room fully clothed to head into what appears to be the main living space. “You’ve watched humans for hundreds of years, as far as I can tell. You must have some interesting insights.”

“Ah, so you want to talk work? How dull.”

“Not work, if you don’t want. Can I get you something to drink?”

“Hm, tea if you have it. Afraid I don’t have much to talk about outside of work, it’s rather my whole purpose for existing.”

“Somehow I doubt that. What about books? Have you read any books you like?”

Izaya blinks, then smiles. “Ah, he wants to start a book club. Sure, I’ll play. But I doubt most of the books I’ve read are anything you’ve heard of. Human literature has a tendency to bury most of itself in the past, nothing truly… _interesting_ surviving the ages.”

“Why’s that?”

“It’s only very recently that most humans can read and write, you know. I have a much more diverse client base than I used to have, before it was this and that petty squabble between the rich. Easy to suppress books when there’s only so many who can read them, ne?”

“I suppose. What do you do with your time, then?”

“I watch. I watch people live their lives as they’re wont. Humans are fascinating creatures, don’t you think?”

“So you’re a professional peeper?”

“I suppose,” Izaya says. “And what do you consider yourself a professional of? Crime? Management? Paperwork?”

“All three,” Shiki says with a voice as dry as his paperwork, “the yakuza demand many skills.”

“And with all these skills, how did you end up in the yakuza, hmh?” Izaya asks, even though he already knows. Happy boys don’t grow up to be men in the mafia.

“They attract a certain type.”

“Oh? And what type is that? Something intrinsic, their need for violence?”

“Maybe some,” Shiki says, “but what does it matter what something was at the start if it’s pressed and cast into a mould that reforges it into a shape like so many others.”

“The family itself? Interesting.”

Shiki shakes his head. “It’s not those with silver spoons in their mouths that come into the yakuza.”

“Not all those without privilege turn to crime,” Izaya counters. Shiki acknowledges that with a brief incline of his head and it’s the start to a conversation that lasts far beyond the sun creeping above the horizon. Something that lasts until Shiki politely excuses himself with noises of ‘work’ and ‘lovely to talk with you’ and ‘feel free to stop by’ and reminds Izaya that he has his own work to be doing.

 

Sometimes he forgets that he’s always being watched.

No, forget is the wrong word. There’s always that little niggling awareness that knows. But mostly it doesn’t _matter._ He’s good at his job. He loves his humans, sure, but he loves to see them surprise him _more_ and he doesn’t love any one more than the others.

He’s made aware now, The Spider sitting lazily in a web he’s constructed that spans the entirety of Izaya’s humble abode.

“Ah, to what do I owe the pleasure?”

“A lapse in your duties.” When The Spider speaks, it’s not something you hear. Not with your ears, at any rate. It’s something that vibrates in your soul and resonates and rattles.

“There has been no lapse,” Izaya spits. He’s been doing this for years, for _decades._ He’d know.

“Oh, but there has,” The Spider says, rubbing two of Its legs together, “Shiki Haruya is not where he should be.”

“My client was taken before the contract was complete,” Izaya says, mind going an icy sort of clear, “something that renders his contract Null. As per your order, ne?” An old order. An order that prevented half of the Japanese aristocracy from disappearing all at once. 

“You delayed in fulfilling your end,” The Spider says. “And that order is expired from this point forwards. See that it doesn’t happen again. You’re excellent at what you do, but you’re not irreplaceable.”

And The Spider is gone, leaving only his web and an unshakable feel of disquiet behind.

 

Somehow, meeting with Shiki has become routine. A break from the monotony of his everyday life. A chance to talk outside of the business of damning and damned souls.

“I found his style to be too _loquacious._ Why use so many words when only a few will suffice?”

“An interesting critique coming from you.”

Izaya scowls, but Shiki’s immune and only gives him a smirk in return.

He’s fascinating.

And so Izaya keeps coming back.

“So if plants create oxygen,” Izaya says to an amused Shiki, “and winter kills the plants, why do you not run out of oxygen during the winter?”

“I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works.”

“But you’re not _positive,”_ Izaya says, triumphant. “Why can’t science answer that, hmm?”

“I think there’s enough oxygen to keep us going until the trees come back. But it’s really not my field of expertise.”

“Your science won’t always be able to protect you,” Izaya mutters.

“Don’t I know it. Like how do I see you if you’re not solid?”

“Of course I’m solid,” Izaya says, amused,“why wouldn’t I be? That would make no sense, ne?”

And to prove it, Izaya plops himself on Shiki’s lap.

Something in the air changes as soon as he does.

Shiki reaches up to touch his face, almost gently. There’s a hunger in his eyes, and Shiki’s tentative fingers cup his check when Izaya leans closer so their chests press together.

That’s the first time he sleeps with Shiki Haruya.

He’s _talented._ Looking back, all Izaya remembers is heat and pressure and sensation running through him until he’s fit to burst and Shiki’s self-satisfied smirk when he does.

By the fifth, Shiki’s figured out all the finicky little ties that keep the kimono on and replaces them with sturdier ties that keep Izaya down.

After the tenth, Izaya stops keeping track.

“You’re beautiful,” Shiki pants into his neck, running his hands all along Izaya’s torso, seemingly every where he can reach except one glaring exception. Izaya’s thighs are beginning to burn in a way they haven’t in a long time, the pleasant ache of near overuse that comes before right before they give out.

Izaya sags back against Shiki’s chest as soon as Shiki groans and comes, thighs sighing with relief. Shiki finally reaches for where he’s been neglecting, nibbling into Izaya’s neck in sharp little bites until he’s sagging in Shiki’s arms, boneless.

“Never again,” Izaya groans, flopping dramatically back against the pillows.

“Far too much work for you, princess?”

Izaya aims a kick that doesn’t land. “I’d like to see you do it, ne?”

“Give me a half hour.”

“A half hour? A bit long, isn’t it?”

It’s Shiki’s turn to throw a swat that doesn’t hit as Izaya laughs. “It’s alright, I’m sure I can entertain myself in the mean time.”

“Oh, god. Anything but that.” Izaya can’t tell if Shiki’s voice is full of fake or real horror.

“Then you better hurry up before I—”

Izaya squeaks as Shiki pulls him into his arms, confining him tight against his chest. “Oh no you don’t, you little monster.”

“And you expect this to stop me?”

Shiki begins to stroke Izaya’s back, long slow strokes with just a touch of nail. Izaya melts a bit despite trying his best to not.

“Sorry, what was that?”

“Hm, nothing. Not a thing. I didn’t say a _word._ ”

Izaya drifts off to the sound of Shiki’s half-muted laugh.


	2. Chapter 2

Izaya doesn’t _have_ to eat.

Shiki feeds him anyway.

Not that it’s a habit Izaya _wants_ to break, he’ll just keep that tidbit to himself.

“Smells delicious,” Izaya says, wrapping arms around Shiki’s waist. It smells like garlic and onion and other spices Izaya’s heard of but never got to taste in life. “Can I have some?”

“Of course,” Shiki says, “I’m not a cruel man.”

“Hmm, debatable.”

“Oh?”

“What else do you call it when you have to beg to finally get the release you want?”

“Good fun. Did you not want me to—?”

“I didn’t say that,” Izaya says hastily, nuzzling into the space between Shiki’s ear and his shoulder. “Don’t put words in my mouth, ne?”

“Like you need _any_ help finding words.”

Shiki finally turns from his cooking, one arm coming to wrap around Izaya’s waist like it always does, the other coming up to cradle his cheek. It’s domestic, a play-pretend at a life they can’t have.

Shiki’s so slow and through when he kisses. It’s nice sometimes.

It’s also nice to escalate, to moan and stroke and press until Shiki’s rummaging around in one of the drawers for the lube he starting keeping around several kitchen escapades ago, when he spilled olive oil all over his pants.

“What’s it about the kitchen that’s like an aphrodisiac to you?” Shiki says, not stopping whatever he’s doing with his hands. Which is good, Izaya might have had to drag him down if he did.

It’s the life of it. Izaya doesn’t have a kitchen, he doesn’t need to eat. He’s not alive, after all.

Shiki is alive and eats and his heart beats in his chest and the kitchen is a symbol of all of that and the work and maintenance that goes into keeping him that way.

“I could ask you the same,” Izaya says instead, kimono half pining his arms where the folds of fabric have become trapped behind his back.

“I guess you’re just so—”

“Don’t do it.”

“— _delicious.”_

Izaya decides the best way to shut Shikiup is to occupy his mouth with _anything_ else. But Shiki’s pleased and self-satisfied and Izaya can feel it even through his hands.

Izaya tries his damnedest to stop the insufferable ass, but he’s at a slight disadvantage and Shiki’s not really one to let him have even that. Besides, he’s playing at being human, at being tamed and docile and so he stays, pinned to the counter.

Not that Izaya can really find it in himself to care when he’s seven sorts of blissed out, not quite able to remember what he was trying to stop Shiki being smug about over that thing Shiki can do with his tongue.

Has to be a sin.

Somewhere beneath two orgasms and and nerves still buzzing from overstimulation comes the thought: “The food will burn, ne?”

“Turned off the stove.”

Izaya struggles to push himself to his elbows. “When?”

“A while ago. Hungry?”

Shiki _insists_ on putting pants on before eating, but Izaya doesn’t care and he’s not sure Shiki doesn’t prefer it when he’s naked. It’s all performance art, after all. Might as well please his audience.

“How was work, honeyboo?” Izaya says between bites of…whatever it is. He thinks there’s meat. Definitely noodles. Who cares, it’s _good_. Spicy. Shiki’s got a heavy hand with spices. Says something about him, but Izaya can’t figure out what. Not yet.

“I knew letting you at the TV was a bad idea.”

“Now, don’t be like that. How was work, hmm? Or is there something you’re trying to hide? Something nefarious you don’t want me to know?”

Shiki’s quiet for just a beat too long. “Nothing that I’ve done.”

“Oh?” It’s cold being naked. Shiki’s lap is warmer.

“We made a new business partner today,” Shiki says carefully.

“It’s amazing how cagey you still are,” Izaya says, tracing a flower that curls over Shiki’s chest. Like the heavy spice hand, it has meaning, just not one Izaya’s sure of. “I’ve seen the absolute worst of humanity, seen them _at_ their worst. I have no stake and no way of influencing your politics, I am, in every way, your ideal confidant. Isn’t that something humans crave? A confidant? Someone to know them?”

Under Izaya’s fingers, Shiki’s heart beats faster.

Interesting.

“Our new business partner specializes in human experimentation,” Shiki says, and his heart rate slows as he talks.

“Humans are cruel,” Izaya says, “especially to one another.”

“This is something else,” Shiki says, rubbing a warm palm up and down Izaya’s arm, seemingly lost in thought. But that’s fine, Izaya knows a sure fire way to get him back. “Get sauce on my pants and I’ll spank you.”

“Is that supposed to be a _deterrent?_ ”

 

Life goes on.

Izaya drags souls to hell every week. Some cry, some scream, some beg. Some simply go.

And through it all, there seems to be no effect on the humans or the rage in Tokyo.

Life goes on, just with one less person in it.

But now he sees _more_. He can see beyond the small threads that connect humans to each other in their everyday lives, he can see the long reaching ones. The strings that tie the underworld together, how they hate and hate each other. To the corporation to the school children to the waiter in a small restaurant with so much hate he can barely see through all of it.

It’s all so _exciting_

“Your soul will forever be lost to Paradise,” Izaya says.

“And hers? Will she have a chance at it?”

“At Paradise?” Izaya tilts his head. He can offer a chance to repent, but that’s at his discretion. If he thinks there’s something to repent for. A small power of his, but _his_ nonetheless. “No.”

“Good,” the man says, and his rage and anger is so powerful that his fists curl and the thread is ripped off the doll before he even leaves the Eternal Twilight.

 

“It’s been two years,” Shiki says, one day, out of the blue.

“Hmm?”

“It’s been two years since we met.”

“Oh,” Izaya says, not looking up from where he’s playing with Shiki’s cellphone. It’s got many more features than his has. Games, for one. “Has it now.”

“Did you not notice?” Shiki says, and he sounds amused.

Izaya shrugs, not paying entirely too much attention. “Time passing doesn’t mean as much to me as it does to humans. Hey, hey, wanna play another round of chess?”

“You never play by the rules.”

“Rules are meant to be broken, ne?”

 

The woman’s name is Yagiri Namie and she loves her brother more than the man selling his soul to avenge his dead sister ever loved her.

She’s on a table when Izaya comes in, features pale and stiff and organs rearranged without care, tumbled over each other in ways they shouldn’t, carelessly tossed aside.

Yagiri doesn’t look up when the corpse starts to move, it’s organs hitting the floor with a wet _slop,_ slithering along with a slimy sound _._ Or when the next one stands. Or the next. She’s engrossed in her work, head bent over a microscope as fingers fly over the knobs.

Ah, but that’s an easy fix.

“Namie,” ‘Seiji’ says as he comes into the room, doors locking behind him. Yagiri’s head snaps up, and she notices the corpses shambling toward her, guts squishing across the floor.

“Seiji, get _out_ ,” she snaps, walking towards the door, grabbing his shoulders. “It’s not safe.”

As Seiji’s eyes tumble out, as his organs slide down to with a wet _plop_ land on Yagiri’s shoes, the earthy smell of flesh and the iron tang of blood intensifying, her expression shifts and tangles and settles on the picture of desperate rage.

Izaya considers it the finest piece of art he’s ever made.

 

Shiki’s books at home are much more interesting than those at his office and change with much more frequency.

They’re track marks in an otherwise impeccable home, the few markers that show where Shiki usually spends his time. One spot on the couch near the lamp, the other in convient reaching distance on the bedside table. The one on the bedside table changes the fastest.

“What’s this?” The cover is red and black and stark but evocative none the less.

Shiki shifts, rolling to lay on his side. “It’s about the different traditions of punishment after death.”

“You mean hell.”

“Sometimes, yes.”

Izaya turns it over in his hands, flipping through the pages. There’s no mention of him, of The Spider either. They’re minor footnotes, he supposes, not what plagues humans in their everyday lives.

“And what do you think?”

“Pardon?”

“Of hell. You’re most of the way through, what do you think? Where’s your soul going to go? Are you to be punished for greed?” Izaya rests a finger on his lips, “Pride? Perhaps sloth.”

Shiki’s fingers are light on Izaya’s side. “None of those, I think.”

“Ah. The sin of lust.” Izaya cocks his head. “Or more of a ‘thou shalt not lie with another man?’ I suppose I have more than one way to drag a man to hell, ne?”

Shiki hums, not looking terribly concerned for the fate of his immortal soul, still tracing up Izaya’s spine with his fingers.

“Is that what you do? Kill them?”

“No,” Izaya says, tone sly, “I’m a full service hit-man, I hide the body too. But, no. I’m _more_ than that. Murder is enough to send someone to hell. Anyone can hire an assassin, pick up a knife. I offer a different service. I offer an eternity of suffering for the the object of your hatred.”

“Oh? Only you offer an eternity, so they do get the part about redemption right.”

“Perhaps.”

Izaya flips through the pages. Punishment, specialized and horrible. Redemption. He remembers walking through the Hells, once, when he first took on his role. It wasn’t very interesting. There’s no room for choice, simply an endless cycle of pain and torture, the parameters set and repeated. He’s never been back.

Shiki’s starting to work on his neck, a slow pull that Izaya doesn’t want to resist. “Anything else you want to share?”

“Hmm, that’d be cheating.”

A whole passage on redemption. Not something that was included in his orientation.

Shiki’s starting to replace his fingers with his mouth, little electric shocks. “Would it?”

“An unfair advantage, for sure,” Izaya says, but a crooked smile blooms. “But who knows what I might say in the heat of the moment, hm?”

“If you’re saying anything, I’m not working hard enough.”

 

The soul on his boat doesn’t seem to appreciate the view. They never do.

Shame, it’s gorgeous.

The boat reaches the other side, gently bumping the shore, water lapping. And Izaya does what he’s never done before.

He steps off the boat.

 

He’s not surprised to see The Spider in his home, sitting on a delicate web that stretches from wall to wall. It’s more effective than a steel wall, Izaya knows. Once you’re in The Spider’s web, it’s impossible to escape.

“I heard you went exploring today.”

Izaya hums agreement. “It’s odd, I’ve been working this job for so long and I’ve never even seen what really happens on the other side. Almost uncharacteristic of me, no?”

“Of course, it has nothing to do with your… _relationship_ with a human.”

“Of course not,” Izaya says, wounded. “I was simply curious. I’ve been offering a contract and didn’t understand the terms, remiss of me, wouldn’t you say?”

“Were the terms not made clear to you?”

“They were. I was simply…curious to see them in effect.”

“You should have come to me.”

“Ah, but it’s really something better experienced, ne?”

“Why?” The Spider says. “It’s where the humans pay for the things you find so interesting about them.”

“To know about the system you are a part of is—”

“You are not a part of that system,” The Spider says. “Yours is not the business of redemption. Yours is the business of damnation.”

“Mine is the business of _vengeance_ ,” Izaya says, “my influence on damnation—”

“Is substantial,” The Spider says. “To take someone to hell is one thing. Murder can achieve that. You contract to have them punished forever without respite, something they pay for in full. When you take them, they do not die. They are _damned_.”

 

Shiki’s late.

It’s not until a little past eleven that Izaya hears the key scraping in the lock.

“Izaya.”

“Shiki.”

“You’re here early,” Shiki says, coming further into the room.

“Hardly, you’re just late.”

“Usually it’s a few days before you surface again. Not that I’m complaining,” Shiki adds, seeing Izaya’s arched brow.

“Days are hard to keep track of, they all seem to slip into one another.”

Shiki laughs. “Isn’t that the truth.” Shiki flips a light on and Izaya blinks, trying to clear the spots. “To what do I owe the honor?”

“Can’t a man surprise his lover? Romance _is_ dead.”

“Is it, now.”

Romance isn’t dead if you consider it rough and hard and almost desperate. If you consider it patient fingers carding through hair afterwards.

Izaya tells him of the hells. He tells him of those damned souls he saved in life only to condemn to an eternity of suffering. The abused prostitutes and servants and children.

He tells Shiki about a contract with no hope for eternity for a handful of years of relief, listening to Shiki’s heart thud in his chest, knowing full well that his is silent as stone.

He tells Shiki about the other shore and what he learned of redemption and true death and isn’t surprised in the slightest to hear his phone buzz in his discarded kimono.

 

She’s young.

Not that she’s too young to be a client, but almost.

Almost.

She wears the uniform of one of the more prestigious schools in the area. And Izaya would be confused if he didn’t already know why she contacted him. Friends and classmates know tow and bow before her. Her parents are kind and loving. She wants for nothing.

Except, apparently, for Shiki Haruya’s death.

He watches The Spider scuttle around her shoulders, whispering into her ear. And she believes with the same fervor that children believe in fairytales and that their parents can do no wrong.

“You’re the hell girl,” she says in the brash fearlessness of youth. The kind that accepts the Twilight Realm for what it is. “Are you gonna grant my wish?”

“That’s up to you,” Izaya says, and the doll is so much heavier in his hands than it ever was before. “If you choose to complete this contract, the object of your hatred will be dragged into hell. But it comes at a price. When you die, you, too, will be dragged down with no hope of redemption.”

As Awakusu Akane takes the doll into her delicate hands, uncertainty flashes onto her face, very briefly. Before it sets into determination. “Will you kill him before he hurts my dad?”

“When you pull the string, the contract is set in motion.”

Awakusu.

Awakusu-kai. Shiki’s family.

Not that Izaya is surprised.

The Spider is not known for his mercy. Izaya’s test will involve as many innocents as it takes.

 

“Izaya,” Shiki says, stepping into his dark apartment.It doesn’t take him long. He was always perceptive. He pauses just inside the doorway. “Ah, you’re here on business.”

It’s not a question.

Izaya silently extends a hand out.

Haruya takes it.

But it is not by Izaya’s hand he goes to hell.

Izaya did think it was a useful trick for a gangster to have.

 

A hundred days.

The minimum amount of time a sinner spends in hell.

A hundred days is practically _forever._

The sun rises and sets and each pass takes a small eternity.

Even watching the humans as they go about, looking and scanning for weaknesses makes him restless, like there’s something _else_ he should be doing. Something he’s forgotten.

Requests seem to trickle in slower than ever, though it’s always been rare to have even one every single night.

“When you pull the string,” he says, “vengeance is taken. You damn your object of hatred and yourself to an eternity without Paradise.”

But not if they die first.

 

On the hundredth day Izaya steps off the boat, taking a sinner by the collar.

On the hundredth day, Izaya walks back onto the boat hand in hand with a demon.

 

“I think it could use a few more hands,” Haruya says drily. “There are a few spots on that wall where there aren’t any.”

“Oh, hush,” Izaya says, “it’s _fitting._ They’re what he wrote odes to in his, ah, _love letters_.”

Haruya hums. “Could be better.”

“Oh?”

Haruya smirks and Izaya vanishes his forest of hands from the wall, gesturing for Haruya to take a turn. Haruya straightens the white lapels of his jacket and goes to work.

 

“I see why you appreciate your job,” Haruya says as they stand on top of a building, watching their client wind through the masses below.

“Fun, isn’t it?”

Haruya agrees even if he doesn’t say anything, Izaya can tell. “Interesting, that’s for sure. I’m glad I chose this.”

“ _Chose_ , ne? Who was it that pulled you out of hell? Hmm? Who argued on your behalf?”

Haruya raises a single eyebrow. It’s an unfair move that Izaya can’t replicate. “I think it started when I asked you on a date.”

Izaya’s laugh doesn’t echo because they’re not really there. “A date, ne?”

“Of course.” Haruya’s cigarette falls but doesn’t hit the roof. “I think this might be the last chance to call it. Same stakes?”

“Hmm, alright,” Izaya says. “Saito is her bully. Making life hell for her through little petty things like humans do and she can’t take it. She’s snapping.”

Haruya’s smirk is sharp and his eyes are already dancing with victory, “Saito is the object of her affections, but he’s dating another girl. Scorned affections.”

“We’ll see, ne?”

Haruya’s right, of course.

“You look very nice in a suit,” he says kindly as the collar tries to choke Izaya like the hellish torture device it is.

It’s worth it, Izaya reminds himself, for Haruya’s quiet discomfort in a yakuta and the tattoos that play peek-a-boo in the edges of the fabric.

 

Time passes much more quickly, now.

But that’s okay, they have forever.

They lay in a content, sweaty knot, the dim light of the forever twilight coming through a window. Haruya’s fingers are relaxing and calming and Izaya’s recently discovered Haruya’s weakness for having his hair stroked like an over-large cat.

And Izaya thinks he’s found his bit of paradise.


End file.
